Thread: Students often get a pass on being deported

Students often get a pass on being deported
Stalled bill would allow some graduates to stay
By JULIA PRESTON
NEW YORK TIMES
Aug. 8, 2010, 11:22PM

The Obama administration, while deporting a record number of immigrants convicted of crimes, is sparing one group of illegal immigrants from expulsion: students who came to the United States without papers when they were children.

In case after case where immigrant students were identified by federal agents as being in the country illegally, the students were released from detention and their deportations were suspended or canceled, lawyers and immigrant advocates said. Officials even have declined to deport students who openly declared their illegal status in public protests.

The students who have been allowed to remain are among more than 700,000 illegal immigrants who would be eligible for legal status under a bill before Congress specifically for high school graduates who came to the United States before they were 16. Department of Homeland Security officials said they had made no formal change of policy to permit those students to stay. But they said they had other, more pressing deportation priorities.

"In a world of limited resources, our time is better spent on someone who is here unlawfully and is committing crimes in the neighborhood," said John Morton, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "As opposed to someone who came to this country as a juvenile and spent the vast majority of their life here."

Still, Republicans say the authorities should pursue all immigrants who are here illegally.

The issue of illegal immigrant students has become pressing because young immigrants have staged increasingly frequent and defiant protests to demand passage this year of the piece of the overhaul that would benefit them.

Lawmakers who support that legislation have asked the administration to halt student deportations until Congress takes it up. But most Republicans are opposed to any action that would weaken enforcement against illegal immigration.

Immigration furor
An internal Homeland Security memorandum, released last month by Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, set off a furor among his fellow Republicans because it showed immigration officials weighing steps they could take without Congressional approval to give legal status to some illegal immigrants — including suspending deportations of students.

The moratorium had been requested by Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the second-highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, and Sen. Richard G. Lugar, R-Ind., the leading sponsors of the student legislation, called the Dream Act.

But a White House official said that the administration had decided against the moratorium, preferring to push for the student bill, which could grant legal status to more than 700,000 young immigrants here illegally.

Dream Act
Instead of a general moratorium, immigration authorities appear to be acting case by case to hold up deportations of young immigrants.

The vast majority of students who are illegal immigrants have clean criminal records, and they would have to keep it that way to qualify to become legal under the Dream Act. To meet its terms, immigrants must also have graduated from high school and lived in the United States for at least five years, and they must complete two years of college or military service.

Last month, the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, estimated that 726,000 young immigrants would be immediately eligible for legal status under the Dream Act, a big increase over earlier estimates.

Lawmakers from both parties say the student bill draws wider support than the broader overhaul - but still not enough to make it likely to pass before the election. Many young immigrants were brought to the United States illegally as small children by their parents. Often they only learn of their illegal status years later, when they are old enough to apply for a driver's license or to attend college.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/7145234.html

Like the countries they came from have a huge over supply of people who are bilingual in English and with American high school level math and science. The prompt return of these students who have gained these skills at our expense with out our permission would accelerate development of their legal communities generally and help the people they left behind. People who out of morals or lack of money remained where they were. Domestic and Foreign investors who together finance workplaces are more likely to create jobs for the other members of the community if there is someone who can interpret and interpolate for them. Both the United States and the countries need the students to leave fast surely not later than the next Presidential election in Mexico.

Wasn't the guy who killed the nun a "student" here since the third grade?

Just saying.